By the mid-1880s, Claude Monet had distanced himself from the modern city, seeking landscape subjects in various parts of France instead. The Norman town of Étretat was famous for its cliffs, rock formations, and fashionable summer homes, but Boats on the Beach at Étretat shows none of these familiar sights. Forced indoors by inclement weather, Monet painted this narrow view of the beach from his room in the Hôtel Blanquet, where he stayed from mid-October to mid-December 1885. In a letter to his future wife, he noted that he had spent the afternoon “painting the caloges [disused fishing boats covered with tarred planks and used for storage] in the rain.”

— Permanent collection label

This work is featured in the online catalogue Monet Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, the first volume in the Art Institute’s scholarly digital series on the Impressionist circle. The catalogue offers in-depth curatorial and technical entries on 47 artworks by Claude Monet in the museum’s collection; entries feature interactive and layered high-resolution imaging, previously unpublished technical photographs, archival materials, and documentation relating to each artwork.

David M. Hopkin, “Fishermen, Tourists and Artists in the Nineteenth Century: The View from the Beach,” in John House and David M. Hopkin, Impressionists by the Sea, exh. cat. (Royal Academy of Arts, London/Thames & Hudson/Abrams, 2007), p. 33.

[4] See Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, Catalogue des tableaux modernes, collection de M. Marczell de Nemes, sale cat. (Galerie Manzi-Joyant, June 18, 1913), lot 113 (ill.), as Plage. According to the Durand-Ruel Archives, “Purchased by Durand-Ruel on 18 June 1913 at the Marczell de Nemes Sale, lot no. 113, for an unnamed person, for 9 500 F,” from an annotated sales catalogue. The Durand-Ruel Archives also has a letter from Durand-Ruel, Paris, to Durand-Ruel, New York, dated June 24, 1913, which says, “Nous avons acheté nous-mêmes plusieurs tableaux importants, mais c’était sur des ordres et nous n’aurions certainement pas payé des prix pareils pour de tels tableaux,” and the archives further state that “Durand-Ruel purchased 11 paintings at this sale, the names of the buyers are not recorded in our books”; see Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 5, 2013, curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago. See also “Liste des prix et noms des acquéreurs de la deuxième vacation de la collection Marczell de Nemes,” Le Gil Blas, June 19, 1913, p. 2, which states that the asking price was 12,000 francs and that the painting was sold to M. Durand-Ruel for 9,500 francs.
[5] According to Daniel Catton Rich, Catalogue of the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection of Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings (Lakeside, 1938), pp. vi; 76, cat. 77; pl. 45.

[6] A purchase receipt on John Levy Galleries letterhead dated November 15, 1922, mentions the sale of this painting by John Levy Galleries for $2,295 as La Plage à Etretat to Mr. C. H. Worcester. Curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago.

[7] A purchase receipt on John Levy Galleries letterhead dated November 15, 1922, mentions the sale of this painting by John Levy Galleries for $2,295 as La Plage à Etretat to Mr. C. H. Worcester; curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago. This painting was on loan from Charles H. Worcester to the Art Institute of Chicago, intermittently, by 1923, according to Museum Registration department artists sheets on file in Museum Registration, Art Institute of Chicago.

[8] The painting stayed in the Worcesters’ home until 1956, when Mr. Worcester died; see receipt of object 14829, on file in Museum Registration, Art Institute of Chicago. Mrs. Mary F. S. Worcester died in 1954.